Corporate killing

Killing on the job

A controversial court case re-opens the debate on corporate killing

THIS week a judge at the Old Bailey convicted Network Rail, the company that owns Britain's railway infrastructure, of breaching health and safety laws over the Hatfield rail crash in 2000, when a faulty rail led to four deaths. Balfour Beatty, the engineering firm maintaining the track, had already pleaded guilty. The lesser verdict was the only sanction available after July, when the judge had thrown out more serious charges of corporate manslaughter levelled at three of Network Rail's former employees and two of Balfour Beatty's.

Campaigners seized on the outcome as further proof that the laws that govern corporate killing need reform. The Law Commission, charged with reviewing Britain's laws, first suggested this in 1996. Nine years, one consultation paper and two manifesto pledges later, the government has published a draft bill. Few doubt that change is necessary: today's rules—which require the prosecution to prove that a single “controlling mind” is to blame for a death—make it hard enough to convict small firms and virtually impossible to convict big ones, where responsibility is spread among managers. That's unfair, which is why the government (egged on by victims' families and trades unions) plans to allow “senior management failures” to be blamed instead.

But harmony on the desirability of reform has been marred by disagreement over details. The unions wanted beefier penalties, with fines and jail terms for guilty directors. Business groups argued this would force companies to take out expensive insurance and would make managers timid. Business won that battle: no such plans are in the final bill, although the government has asked the Health and Safety Commission to look at them again.

Another question was over exemptions for certain public bodies. Cynics suspect ministers panicked when they realised that they might be charged under the laws. A compromise was reached which exempted government departments over policy or “core public functions”, but not their ordinary behaviour as employers.

Despite all the discussion, the bill remains complicated. “Who is a senior manager? Did they owe a duty of care to the deceased? Were they really grossly negligent? In practice, this bill is extremely complex,” says Andrew Litchfield, a health and safety lawyer with Wragge and Co. “It will make for some very happy lawyers.”